Current, conventional thinking about social, political and economic subjects typically narrows the options available to a set of policies advocated by two, may be three political parties or scarcely dissimilar ideologies. Consequently any genuine radical or lateral thinking about these topics is abandoned and it is assumed and accepted that the fundamental questions of the state, the government, and of tackling the biggest societal problems of the day are already settled. Seldom are alternatives to these entrenched matters – such as whether the state should have any positive role at all in anything – given the light of day, let alone the opportunity of being debated. This phenomenon, which presents a distinct challenge to libertarians, is known as the “false dilemma” – the illusion that the only choice is between a very constricted range of possible options, preserving the status quo in favour of the state and its cronies while at the same time bestowing the illusion of control on a gullible electorate.

In the UK the “false dilemma” is playing itself out in such a way as to completely obliterate one of the basic truths (understood by Austro-Libertarians) that all humans can flourish and co-exist peacefully. Those on the ideological right such as supporters of the Conservative Party believe that business should be helped in order to boost economic growth, while cuts should be made to welfare and to public services in order reduce the government “deficit” (a much overused term given that the overall debt and not the deficit is the real problem) and to slim down the cash cow that the benefits system has become to the allegedly lazy and unproductive. Those of the ideological left believe that a strong welfare state, heavy taxes on the wealthy and increased government spending are needed to end the scourge of poverty. Both of these ideologies contain kernels of truth and genuine, honourable concerns that make their particular preoccupations seem plausible. It is true, for instance, that business needs to flourish if there is to be any economic progress at all, and that government needs to reduce its profligate borrowing, taxing and wasting with all due haste. On the other hand, it does not seem fair that a society should allegedly produce vast wealth for a few while leaving others to languish in stagnating poverty, nor is it necessarily true that wealth creation is “top-down”. The continuing result of this for UK politics seems to be that political action is becoming a choice, or a very false dilemma, between two broadly defined groups of people in society – a choice between those who are “rich” and those who are “poor”.

This impression is exacerbated by the fact that the political parties whose rhetoric represents these ideologies never achieve their aims, or never really carry them out. “Austerity” is proving not to boost economic growth nor help the plight of the poor simply because government spending is not, in fact, decreasing. Bank bailouts and cartelisation of businesses will not do the same either as they simply perpetuate malinvestment and economic waste. They do, however, save the politically connected rich from the consequences of their actions while leaving everyone else to foot the bill. On the other side, increased government spending and a burgeoning welfare state only siphon funds from the productive sector to be consumed and wasted by government. Both sides, therefore, in failing to ever be able to achieve their stated aims provide plenty of ammunition for the opposition, ammunition that is fuelling this apparent basic choice between “rich” and “poor”.

If we are ever to have any hope of recovery from the current economic malaise we must seek for a repudiation of this false choice and a restoration of the understanding that both economically and ethically the rich and poor can prosper side by side. At the heart of the problem, the false axiom accepted by each ideology, is the notion that government must help somebody in order to create a better society. There is curious mixture of economic and ethical arguments that are used in order for each side to select whom government should help and to whom it should deny the same. Take, for example, the supporters of big business. They will say that it is right to use taxpayers’ money to bail out the banks in order to avoid a complete financial meltdown. Conveniently “their chums” in the city will reap fat rewards from doing so. But they then deny this very same method – the diversion of taxpayers’ money – to welfare programmes to help the poor because people should work for what they earn without leeching from the productive and the so-called “benefits scroungers” should get off their backsides and find a job. In other words they are using primarily economic arguments to justify bank bailouts while using ethical ones to deny welfare spending. Their “lefty” opponents will argue that throwing cash at the rich who made mistakes is unjust and that they should be left to foot the bill for their own mistakes. Yet they then state that welfare spending is needed to eliminate poverty and fuel growth from the “bottom up”. So they too, deny the flowing of taxpayer’s cash to certain groups based on ethical grounds but then promote it to others based on economic grounds. Each side, will of course, pepper their ethical arguments with economic ones and vice versa – the right, for example, will, as we have said, argue that welfare spending needs to be cut in order to reduce government outlays, and the left will argue that alleviating poverty is a just and noble cause. But the main thrust of each side’s opinion cannot be denied.

If we unscramble all of this and look at the ethical and economic arguments separately we will find that there are no grounds whatsoever for any state involvement. If it is unjust to violently confiscate tax revenue from innocent citizens to fund the lifestyle of bamboozling bankers then it is equally unjust to do the same to fund the lifestyles of those who are poorer. The difference is one of degree rather than of kind. Nobody, whether he is a prince or a pauper, a saint or a sadist, or a capitalist or a labourer has the right to wrestle away the property of other people for his own benefit. And from the economic side, bailing out bad business will simply perpetuate the moral hazards and malinvestments that need to be eliminated, while continuously funding the poor through welfare spending will only exacerbate poverty as it makes being poor relatively more attractive, reducing any incentive for people to do more to lift themselves out of that position, while squeezing the role of benevolence and charity for the genuinely needy. Furthermore, government would do a lot more for the poor if it stopped interfering in wealth creation in the first place with all of its burdensome laws and regulations that make the exercise impossible but for a few large and politically connected corporate favourites.

The real choice is not between “rich” and “poor”, “left” or “right”, “Conservative” or “Labour” “employer” and “employee”, and whatever other faux selection that the establishment throws at us. The real choice we have to face is, on the one hand, whether we want to continue with a political and economic system that, whomever’s interests the particular delegates of the day purport to promote, will only result in a parasitic existence for the politically connected at the expense of the stagnation of the standard of living for the rest of us. Or, on the other hand, we could choose a system where nobody has the violently enforceable right to live at the expense of everyone else and that everyone is free to trade and produce whatever he wants with his property, a system that will raise the standard of living for everyone and not just a select few. Only by considering radical options and overcoming the assumption and acceptance that the fundamentals of our society are beyond debate can we hope to build a world that is both truly just and economically prosperous.